Thursday, March 13, 2014

Book Review: Tesla's Attic

Mitchell Stein- Tesla’s Attic is a fantastic new sci-fi
adventure from author duo Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman, and is not only
entertaining, but is also somewhat educational.

When Nick Slate’s house burns down, his family is forced to
move out to a ramshackle house that they inherited from their grandmother.
Hoping to make some money, Nick decides to sell some of the junk he found in
the attic in a garage sale. After selling almost all of these items, he
realizes each one has a dark secret behind them and possesses unique and
irregular capabilities and could’ve quite possibly belonged to the legendary
Nikola Tesla. This also attracts the attention of a secret society, named the Accelerati who seem to be interested in
these items as well. Nick has to collect these items back before the Accerlati
get to it, and protect the items that are part of a much larger plan by Tesla
himself.

The book is well written. It’s a perfect intro to a sci-fi series,
starting off slow and steady and setting the stage for a few more epic books
(the book clearly says “Book One”, so we are reassured that more are on the
way). As a side story to the science fiction, there’s lots of teenage drama to
be found in the book too, and the characters who play a role in this story are
mostly great. The book is dramatic at times, sometimes funny, and always
exciting.

The story dives well into Tesla’s story, with some details
on the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Tesla, and Tesla’s electric tower
idea, Wardenclyffe Tower, which to be honest, I didn’t know much about until I
read this book.

Although it features a secret society, this society is not Plus
Ultra, which is the secret society that Nikola Tesla was part of in
Disney’s alternate reality game, The Optimist. It is
speculated that Plus Ultra and Tesla will both make an appearance in
Disney’s Tomorrowland film in May 2015, which is a similar sci-fi style
film, written by Damon Lindelof and directed by Brad Bird. This book might
possibly serve as a purpose to drum up excitement for Tomorrowland being
released next year.

Either way, this book is one of my favorites to be released
from Disney Publishing. This series has a lot of potential, and may possibly
join the ranks of the “Peter and the Starcather” and “Kingdom Keepers” series.
I’m excited to see what the author duo has in store in the next installment.